Nokia vs MOT: rant

I have been a Nokia user ever since I first got a cell phone in 1996. With great reluctance I switched to a MOT phone when I switched to Verizon. I have to say that it was not a great switch.

The MOT phone has all of the capability to receive the Vcast content and my favorite feature is the camera phone's ability to take pictures to use as icons for people in the phonebook. That's fun.

However, the whole user interface is terrible, really terrible. My main gripe is the extreme number of clicks it take to send a simple IM. I have been a big user of IM because I don't really like talking on the phone but still need to communicate quick information - perfect for IM. With the Nokia it was a snap. On my fancy new MOT phone it takes twice as many clicks and there are a number of points of failure.

So it is with great interest that I see two Nokia news items today. The first is simply the release of new phone models. That's all well and good and Nokia will continue to pump out new phone models but then there is this: Unlicensed Mobile Access.

From the article: "UMA, a 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Program) standard, is an access technology that allows seamless handover of mobile voice and data from a cellular network to a wireless local area network (WLAN/WiFi). The UMA standard defines how mobile operators can turn home, office and public WLANs into seamless extensions of their cellular networks. With UMA, operators can deliver voice and data services to subscribers over the WiFi access networks, dramatically increasing mobile service usage while decreasing costs of network deployment."

Couple that with Nokia's investment in DVB-H via Crown Castle cell towers and Nokia is starting to look like a huge player - again.